By Hale Jim
Warehouses are oftentimes buzzing with activity – from loading and offloading trucks, storage, and cleaning activities – and this means dust build-up is bound to occur. And as a warehouse owner, you should look at how to get rid of dust in the air around your warehouse considering the health-threatening risks that it presents. As such, setting up solid dust suppression solutions enhances safety and compliance in your warehouse. But the question remains which effective dust control techniques should you employ? Here’s a look at some methods worth considering.
Fogging and Misting Systems
Some warehouse activities like offloading grains or powdery products from trucks send huge clouds of fugitive dust into the atmosphere. And to help control the dust particulates, fogging, and misting machines like those found on sites like bosstek.com are the perfect solution. The systems leverage an atomizing technology to arrest airborne dust. Through a combination of well-engineered nozzles, powerful fans, and pumps, the systems send millions of tiny water droplets – that are roughly the same size as the dust particles – into the atmosphere.
Realize that if the dust particles are larger than the water droplets, suppression will not occur. But if the sizes of the two (dust particles and water droplets) are comparable or almost the same, the droplets will collide with the dust particles and bring them to the ground. This atomizing technology ranks fogging and misting systems among the best dust suppression techniques that use less water yet are effective airborne dust control solutions.
Surface Dust Suppression
Fogging systems may be one of the best solutions if you want to arrest fugitive dust – but can they produce fog with enough moisture to seal the ground and prevent dust build-up back into the atmosphere? No – because fogging machines produce smaller droplets with less residual benefit on surface dust suppression. Therefore to address surface dust, use sprinklers, and hose pipes to wet surfaces and prevent dust particles from escaping to the atmosphere. It’s worth noting that this technique uses a lot of water that may elevate the operational cost in your warehouse.
Alternatively, chemical dust suppressants like calcium chloride and magnesium chloride help in surface suppression – you apply them on the dust-filled area, and they’ll make the surface damp by absorbing moisture from the air. Apart from that, chemical additives are also effective in dust control. When mixed with water, the additives reduce the surface tension and boost the ability of water to agglomerate with finer dust particles, preventing them from escaping into the air.
Partitioning
Think of partitioning as portable dust-resistant walls or curtains you can use in your warehouse to contain dust. For instance, you can use partition walls to enclose a dust-generating activity and restrict the particles in one area only. Alternatively, you can use portable dust-proof walls to protect a specific location or products from dust.
Installing Ventilation Systems
Ventilation machines are the go-to solutions when dust is a persistent problem in your warehouse. While their primary purpose is maintaining the air fresh – free from gaseous pollutants – some ventilation systems come with extraction fans, filters, and blowers that separate air and contaminants (including dust). This can be a perfect way to eliminate dust particles from your warehouse’s atmosphere.
Dust particles in the warehouse are a critical problem demanding immediate attention. And to effectively control dust in your warehouse, you must have a solid dust control strategy in place.
